One more preseason week in the books. The standard caveats apply. Defenses are ahead of the offenses because game planning is bigger on offense and teams do not do that at all in August. But if the protection holds, the reads tend to be easy by NFL standards.

I worry that Calvin Johnson(notes) is going to blow up for a team drafting early if they're able to snake him back late. Don't let that happen. Adrian Peterson or Chris Johnson plus Megatron should be illegal. You can't allow those two owners to have another possible top-five fantasy weapon.

Even before his 89-yard TD jaunt, I thought Matt Forte(notes) was good value in the fifth or sixth round. He still may prove worthy of even a fourth-round pick. I agree that Forte is nothing special; but Chester Taylor(notes) is old and finished (3.6 yards per carry in '09 in a great Vikings offense).

Jermichael Finley(notes) will dominate this year as the Packers best possession and goal-line receiver and the guy that defenses just can't

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Finally we have NFL games. But of the meaningless summer variety as we kick off 2010 in our Scouting Notebook.

Lynell Hamilton's(notes) torn ACL has cleared more goal-line duty for Pierre Thomas(notes), who thus moves up from a third-round pick to the second round. Reggie Bush(notes) is strictly situational. I know living with Sean Payton's whims each week is maddening, but Thomas could be a 2,000-yard, 20-TD back if used aggressively in that offense so you can't afford to let him slide too far. The departure of Mike Bell(notes) coupled with Hamilton's misfortune raises Thomas's projection well beyond last year's numbers.

Chris Johnson is not a goal-line back, having been stuffed a league-worst 45 times last year. And he struggled to score (before ultimately getting in and limping off) in his series of attempts against the Seahawks. This lowers the TD upside and limits his value somewhat in all formats, making him a

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There’s such little data thus far that it’s very dangerous to read too much into the results in the early MLB season.

Rasmus has a solid power track-record.
(Jeff Roberson/AP)

But you can’t wait until June to recalibrate values. Heck, even June is too early for some. So where should we focus? Transformative seasons are often evidenced quite early by K/BB ratio.

I remember back in April of 2003, many were saying not to believe Estaban Loaiza because he wasn’t going to win 30 games or have a 1.25 ERA or 0.667 WHIP. But those staying on the sidelines missed out on 16 more wins and an ERA of 3.15 or under each of the next four months – plus 41 Ks in 35.2 September/October innings.

So that 35/5 K/BB in April should have been respected. Ditto Derek Lowe(notes) in 2002, when his 23/9 K/BB in April held up all year on the way to 21-8, 2.58, 0.974 WHIP.

Similarly, season-long success has recently been presaged by dramatic

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Braves 20-year-old phenom Jason Heyward(notes) is already making 2010 fun and is an example of why we all love sports. Let’s try to project him using comparable players who were regulars in an age-20 season (turning 21 before June 30 disqualifies you).

By some measures, Heyward is already a 50/50 shot for Cooperstown.
(Scott Cunningham/Getty Images)

First off, thanks again to the great BaseballReference.com and its outstanding “player finder” feature. That’s the best subscription a baseball fan can buy. (Maybe they’ll comp me now.)

I limited the search parameters to offensive-oriented positions like the corner OF one played by Heyward. So we’re only looking at 1B, 3B, LF and RF. We have 27 players with at least 502 plate appearances in that age-20 season going back as far as 1907. The last 20-year-old qualifier before Heyward? Former Dodger Adrian Beltre(notes) in 1999.

Of those 27, 20 were league average or

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We’re a few days away from getting our first lineups of the year. While the impact on where you slot your hitters is much more marginal than we imagine for the real-life team, it does have a more significant impact on each individual’s statistics.

So where a player is likely to hit is, like park effects last week, merely a head or tail wind. It’s not something that will radically impact player value in most cases, but it matters on the margins. And, let’s face it, it’s on the margins where most fantasy leagues are won or lost.

Veteran stat maven Cyril Morong has determined through extensive analysis that on-base percentage is three times more important than slugging percentage for a leadoff hitter while slugging is almost equally important to on-base percentage to a No. 4 hitter. Overall, on-base percentage is about 53 percent more valuable than slugging percentage. Note that the OPS stat that we all now use assigns

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Ballpark effects are usually discussed in the context of homers, which do not necessarily correlate to runs. They are also typically overstated – at the extreme end of the spectrum, we’re talking about three or four more homers for the generic 30-homer hitter.

Still, the swing between playing in a tough park and playing in a friendly one can be six or eight homers. But first we need to know how the park plays for lefty and righty hitters, as park effects are rarely uniform. Fortunately, the Bill James Handbook breaks that down for us.

A 100 Park Index is neutral while, say, 120 means it’s 20 percent easier to hit a homer in the park in question than in all other parks. A number lower than 100 means it is comparably harder.

Here are the teams whose home park last year boosted homers the most for lefty hitters – Cubs (Park Index 139), Brewers (124), Diamondbacks (123), White Sox (122), Rangers (120) and Yankees (120).

For righty

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Environment is the major key to fantasy football production. These rankings assess the foundation upon which fantasy football statistics rise (or fall). NFL offenses are ranked 1-through-32 in the following categories: red zone trips per game, third down conversion percentage, yards per rush attempt, yards per pass attempt, sack percentage allowed, rushing TDs per game and passing TDs per game. The following totals represent the final 2009 team rankings.

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Week 17 is always part real/part exhibition. But the ratio of the latter Sunday was greater than in most seasons. Lesson: if your league counts Week 17 to decide your fantasy championship, you might as well count preseason weeks, too.

Let's look around the league one last time as we begin to wrap up our fantasy coverage here in a very hefty holiday Scouting Notebook.

I thought Brandon Marshall(notes) and Josh McDaniels were like Peaches and Herb. But they turned Sid and Nancy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_and_Nancy on us again. I just took Marshall early second round in a Yahoo! 2010 mock draft after considering how he seemingly won McDaniels over in posting his third-straight 100-catch season. But he's a problem child again, as the veterans reportedly called for McDaniels to harshly discipline him for not acting like a professional. Where he lands in 2010 is anyone's guess. But his problems seem to be of his own